“She’s Got It Where It Counts, Kid.”
“She’s fast enough for you, old man.”
Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon
North American cover.
Since Disney’s acquisition of George Lucas’ hand-me-down cash cow, we’ve been subject to a steady pattern of annual installments in the Star Wars film franchise, with semi-annual AAA game releases to punctuate that constant flow of cinematic content. This serves as a reversal of roles dating back just a short few years prior (well, closer to twenty years ago, actually); where in waiting three years between each installment in the prequel trilogy, it felt like we were getting new Star Wars games on something like a monthly basis. That’s barely an exaggeration, either: Depending on which releases you count (whether excluding mobile games, or counting handheld versions of console titles separately), there were anywhere between 32 or 50 Star Wars games that came out during this mere six year period — not even beginning to tally the cavalcade of continued releases after Revenge of the Sith tied up that trilogy. This was Star Wars at its point of peak oversaturation, and so the video games flowed like a waterfall.
Luckily, the prequels were not the exclusive source that developers were being made to pull from during this period. Not to say that the newer trilogy didn’t spawn the occasional gem of a game (Episode I: Racer, Republic Commando); but past a certain point, you had a large contingent of the Star Wars audience yearning for reminders of “the good ol’ days,” and money to be made by meeting that demand. Of the more nostalgia-pandering titles released during this period, perhaps the most fondly remembered came in the forms of Rogue Squadron, Rebel Strike, and the original Battlefront — all taking advantage of iconic set pieces and theming from the original ’77 – ’83 trilogy. But as a wise Jedi Master once sagely stated: “There is another.” Another release which attempted to sell itself on recreating classic scenes from the original trilogy, only to much less acclaim or avail.
Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon represents a 2003 effort developed by Pocket Studios for the Game Boy Advance, with a focus on “3D” vehicle control and rail-shooting combat. If that sounds like overly-ambitious scope for an early 2000s handheld title, you’d be right: While Flight of the Falcon focuses on attempting to push the platform past its limits, it does so at the detriment of most every other facet of its design. Despite solid inspirations and grand aspirations, the title would go on to rate amongst the worst-reviewed Star Wars games of all time, and ultimately end the business endeavors of the game studio who produced it. And so, at the [unlikely] risk of it becoming more powerful than we can possibly imagine, the time has come for us to strike it down.
Granted, the GBA would prove itself capable of running some decent 2.5D FPS titles… Never mind some of the stinkers among that lot.
“Never Tell Me the Odds!”
Pocket Studios as photographed for Edge magazine.
Pocket Studios – true to their name – were a developer who dealt exclusively in portable games over the course of their brief career. While hailing from England’s county of Kent, their portfolio would demonstrate collaborations with a worldwide range of brands and IPs… which is to say, their output carried the additional gimmick of consisting entirely of licensed titles, including handheld re-imaginings of other studios’ console releases. By the explanation of company founder Stephen Iles: “All the publishers we’ve been to, and the general banter in the industry, is that unless it’s got an intellectual property on it, they can’t sell it.” Perhaps not the most exciting work for a small studio to take on, but they seemed determined to approach these projects with aplomb regardless (“We’re not fighting against them, we’re going to take their power and use it against them — the old judo technique”), and to establish themselves as a team capable of maximizing handheld hardware.
Case in point, their debut game: The Game Boy Color conversion of Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare. Now, in bringing a 3D fixed camera title to a piece of notoriously underpowered tech, you’d expect that a shift in perspective would be the first concession made — most likely to top-down or some manner of isometric view. Surprisingly though, Pocket Studios’ version of The New Nightmare would manage to carry over this aspect, by casting [pseudo] 3D characters in front of pre-rendered backdrops. In doing so, they accomplished what Capcom and HotGen Ltd. had attempted and abandoned just a couple years prior, with their planned demake of the original Resident Evil for Nintendo’s portable. Does all that make the GBC version of The New Nightmare a particularly great game? Not really, by most folks’ metrics. It’s visually impressive, granted, but also quickly monotonous and generally underwhelming in terms of actual gameplay.
A contributor to this – one concession that Pocket Studios could not avoid – is that the combat could not exist within the pre-rendered scenes. As more technically-minded reviewers were able to ascertain, “because the Game Boy Color’s high-color mode is too processor intensive to have both you and enemy sprites moving on top of them, combat sequences have been separated into its own mini-game.” Thus, the game interrupts players with constant transitions into simpler birds-eye view shooting sections, and rids it almost altogether of its survival horror elements. Of course, there are other issues at play here as well; including some lackluster puzzles, grating sound design, and a disappointingly short playtime (roughly one hour’s worth). This isn’t to poo-poo Pocket’s cumulative efforts on the project, as they certainly achieved an impressive feat of technical wizardry with their debut game. It’s only to highlight what will become some future talking points within this article.
Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare for Game Boy Color
(Infogrames / Pocket Studios, 2001)
With the release of the Game Boy Advance, Pocket Studios would now be able to ply their trade on a more powerful piece of kit. As their first order of business on new hardware, they quickly set about pushing it to its absolute limits by… converting a handful of well-worn early 80s arcade games, as part of the Midway’s Greatest Arcade Hits collection. Well, everyone’s entitled to a warm-up, aren’t they? Where Pocket really started cooking with gas again was with their conversion of LEGO Racers 2, as it stood among some of the earlier 3D racing titles for the platform. Not a particular stand-out in that field, mind you, but a return to form for the ambitious devs, to be sure. From this point forward, Pocket Studios would only be seen dealing in the most cutting-edge of technical concepts across the rest of their catalogue! By which I mean, they immediately ended up getting stuck in a two year rut of developing nothing but samey-playing isometric action games; including Army Men: Operation Green, Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, and The Incredible Hulk. So much for that pioneering spirit, I suppose.
To be brutally honest, all of this wave of games from Pocket Studios are pretty underwhelming — fully forgettable fare of the most middling variety. It’s as if the collective passion had gone from the team, as they fell into a slump of repurposing effectively the same core game in order to meet their contractual obligations as efficiently as possible. About the most novel entry from this period in their history would be The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which brought a turn-based combat approach to the perspective and managed to pack in a fair bit of narrative. It also boasts some of the absolute most hideous character portraits you’ll ever find in a video game, and found itself quickly succeeded by a far more interesting pair of GBA Lord of the Rings titles developed by Griptonite Games. Perhaps what Pocket Studios needed was an IP that would get them excited again: The chance to contribute to a series whose cultural impact was matched only by its own technical innovations in its medium. I suppose Lord of the Rings somehow didn’t manage to count in that regard?
Continuing a license agreement established in 2000, THQ had the lucrative rights to publish Star Wars titles to the GBA. They had exercised this arrangement by commissioning three separate third-party studios to produce a trio of Episode I & II-inspired titles (as was the style at the time): A HotGen conversion of Star Wars: Jedi Power Battles, a take on Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones courtesy David A. Palmer Productions, and Star Wars: The New Droid Army by Helixe — all released in 2002. With THQ in the business of contracting out development to a revolving door of developers on this per-game basis, it would be Pocket Studios who were lucky enough to pick up the next gig. Having spent their past six releases bouncing between different publishers – fully embracing the “mercenary studio” lifestyle – Pocket were well-acquainted with this sort of dealing. But perhaps feeling inspired by their long-time reverence for the source material at hand (more likely a condition by THQ), this new project would not be yet another in their line of cookie-cutter isometric titles. It was time for the studio to get back to work making the hardware work hard for them.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for Game Boy Advance
(Black Label Games / Pocket Studios, 2002)
On June 23rd, 2003, a press release was sent across the gaming news outlets: Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon would be due on shelves by later that summer, representing the continued collaboration between LucasArts and THQ. In fact, the implication made in this announcement would seem to be that LucasArts themselves were helming development — which would certainly not be the case in any capacity. Lucas only served to provide the license and assist with matters of the legal / branding varieties, as well as contribute some marketing lines here and there. In the case of Flight of the Falcon, Director of Marketing Liz Allen would promote the upcoming title as “offering Game Boy Advance players an opportunity to experience all the drama and exhilaration of the Star Wars universe.” In other words: The game would see players steering the Millenium Falcon – supposedly across “14 combat-filled missions” – and be due out within just a few months of June. Unfortunately, between both of these claims, neither would actually be fully accurate.
For one, the game missed its initial launch window by a matter of months — lagging behind until an eventual November release. This came after the game had already been granted a purported extension in an attempt to meet a September release, which obviously came and went without the cartridge being fully ready. With nothing in the way of real insight into what was going on within Pocket Studios at this time, any guesses to what kept the game running behind schedule would be pure speculation. All that being said, I’m gonna go ahead and baselessly speculate anyway: Pocket Studios were probably booking themselves to develop multiple games concurrently at this juncture, with a July release for their take on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl likely still being worked toward by the time Flight of the Falcon was announced in June. For a small studio whose financial existence depended on a constant chain of contract work, any pause to their production flow could have proved potentially devastating. At the same time, this obviously makes for an exhausting existence, and the rate of progress being made on games can suffer for it. I’m sure it was a difficult situation for all involved, assuming my theory holds water.
Despite games databases across the Internet pointing to a November 18th release date for the game, THQ apparently didn’t see fit to announce the launch to the press until the 21st. With the developer’s futures potentially on the line, their expectations placed on the game must have well been lofty. Could the novelty of starring Star Wars’ most iconic spaceship be enough to impress players? Would it manage to shine through the sheer glut of other Star Wars games being released around this same time? Was The Force™ strong with this piece of interactive software? We’ll have to search our feelings to figure out what’s true.
Griptonite’s takes on The Two Towers and Return of the King would see the films realized as Diablo-esque loot games, with choices of characters providing unique campaigns and individual progression / play styles. It’s here where I have to admit to having sunk hundreds of hours into the Return of the King game specifically, as it kept the cartridge slot of my Game Boy Advance SP occupied over a course of months.
“Boba Fett Is Escaping with Han Solo’s Frozen Body.”
“Outsmart the Empire in this all-new classic Star Wars Game!”
Back of North American box.
Once upon a time, in a fantastical galaxy far away, there was a roguish smuggler by the name of Han Solo. Accompanied by his stalwart space bear companion Chewbacca, the two would soar through space in a bucket of bolts known as the Millennium Falcon. Though the light freighter may have looked like a mere hunk of junk, beneath its proverbial hood laid some serious modifications, making it one of the fastest and most discreet spacecrafts in its class. And so, the Falcon’s place in history would be cemented by its exemplary service on behalf of the Rebel Alliance — playing roles in the destruction of both of the Galactic Empire’s Death Stars (among other deeds of daring and do-goodery). Flight of the Falcon serves to put you in the cockpit during some of the shuttle’s most iconic moments… the key word here being “some,” and with a healthy heap of filler in-between.
In the tradition of the likes of Star Wars Trilogy Arcade; Flight of the Falcon‘s campaign is less a cohesive narrative, and more an assortment of scenes and scenarios sans context. One moment you’ll be piloting the Falcon against a wave of TIE fighters as you escape an Imperial inspection, and the next you’ll be steering a landspeeder making your way through the Mos Eisley Spaceport as Han transports Luke and company to his ship’s hangar bay. Which brings us to two noteworthy points here: Not every mission is ripped from the movies – with a number of “original” scenes inserted to take place between the more iconic moments – and not every level actually has you flying the Falcon. In fact, out of a total of thirteen missions, the titular vessel stars in only eight of them. To be clear, this is definitely a decision for the better, as it helps to add at least some element of variety to proceedings / introduce several scenarios that the Millennium Falcon simply wouldn’t make sense within the scope of. For as much retconning and creative liberty as Pocket Studios were afforded to make, they stop short of pulling a Rebel Assault and taking credit for destroying the Death Star away from Luke’s X-Wing.
Expectedly, the core of the game is in its combat mechanics; where you are expected to fly in a forward direction, steer to avoid incoming fire and obstacles, and to fire back with your own available array of weaponry. Most missions will task you with destroying a set number of a specific target before you’re able to exit, while others will require you to speed towards your destination within a set time limit. In either case, you’ll have to balance offense and defense in order to avoid untimely death by explosion. This is easier said than done, of course — owing not just to the game’s intended difficulty, but also to some odd design / technical issues we’ll be covering in due time. In any case, all this gameplay is presented from behind-the-back perspective (save for one stage played in first-person, plus a bonus minigame), and serves to demonstrate the scaling-based pseudo-3D on display.
So, let’s talk about the visual component, why don’t we? With enemies and scenery consisting of a mix of polygonal models and sprites, the trick behind creating the illusion of movement lies in enlarging these objects until they expand beyond the limits of the frame (the GBA’s screen resolution), at which point they disappear / move behind the camera. It’s a technique which proves simple, classic, and largely effective here: Most of the shapes and color schemes of Star Wars’ iconic ship designs lend themselves just fine to low-poly polygonal models, and to being recognizable from their smaller sprites further in the distance. You can discern a TIE fighter at a size of just 7 pixels when need be, and so this helps in aiding smoother transitions as they scale towards you during the game’s motion. And as for the scenery, the game does a nice enough job of having elements and obstructions emerge from the horizon line, and using animated walls and floors (or scrolling starfields and distant planets, as the case may be) to help convey your sense of forward thrust. All these elements are honestly pretty smartly designed, and the rough edges that come with them are largely tolerable.
… Of course, the key word there is “largely,” as there are a few of those graphical quirks that do wind up distracting or disrupting. The first of which is a lack for a sense of depth, where you can never quite be sure how far away you are from a head-on collision with whatever lies in front of you. Granted, the answer to this question is typically “further away than you might think,” which tends to err in your favor. Secondly, there’s the issue with sprites being scaled larger than their base resolution, where you’ll notice portions begin to discolor in distracting fashion (lots of purples and teals that shouldn’t be there) and clip through other elements. But maybe the most detrimental to your ability to play the game will be the massive framerate drops, dipping into the single digits at times. What’s particularly shocking about these bouts of crippled performance is that they typically occur during missions where split-second object avoidance is critical — where you’re made to steer hover vehicles close to the ground, through highly dense locations. With your abilities to control and react compromised, these make for some of the game’s most frustrating moments.
And make no mistake: Flight of the Falcon can be an incredibly frustrating game, even when running as intended. Survival against waves of enemies will serve a true test of your mettle. Missions with time limits will come down to the wire, even if you run it at max throttle for the entire course. Staring down a Star Destroyer feels every bit as overwhelming as I imagine it would for a real Rebel pilot. The question is, was the degree of difficulty here what was fully intended by the developers, or the unintentional result of some underlying design flaws? Let’s examine a few cases here before reaching our determination.
When it comes to the Falcon and X-Wing – the two spacecrafts which allow for full horizontal and vertical movement across the screen – dodging incoming laser fire will be one of your top concerns. Despite your range of movement, this is still easier said than done, given the speed of projectiles and what is often a lack of distance between you and your opponents. Effectively, “attack range” goes both ways for you and your targets. Your key advantage is a shield allowing you to take more than a few shots (a minimum of eight), though this can be depleted in a matter of a second by some faster-firing formations and emplacements. At certain points, taking damage feels unavoidable, as enemies appear faster than your lagging lasers can take them down. And if you should be unlucky enough to face down a Star Destroyer? The massive machines fire about six lasers in your general direction every second, and remains a presence on screen for upwards of a whole minute. You can shoot its laser turrets in order to curb the gunfire, or eventually fly underneath the ship where the guns can’t reach you. Of course, if you opt for the latter, you won’t be able to tell when you’ve actually cleared the ship, and are liable to instantly blow yourself up on attempting to ascend.
Missions which see you driving a landspeeder and speeder bike take some of the emphasis off of shooting, and place more on weaving through environmental obstacle courses. With your ability to move vertically removed, your focus shifts to strafing and speed, and to reaching the finish line in the short time limits allotted. As mentioned earlier, this actually ends up requiring near-constant throttle, to where braking is effectively conceding the race. But with the dense backdrops of Mos Eisley’s bustling city and Endor’s endless tree forests, you’ll find yourself facing down hazards ’round every stump and alley — and that’s before you even factor in the stormtroopers, scout trooper bikers, and looming AT-STs. With head-on collisions resulting in instant death, and framerates dropping into the single digits, it makes for some… let’s call them “challenging” stages.
But there’s one more factor to consider across most all of these stages — one which serves to exacerbate already frustrating situations. On occasion, you will suffer unavoidable damage for absolutely no discernible reason. It’s not for some lack of skill on a player’s part, or visual glitch not displaying incoming fire: In testing surrounding one incident during my time with the game, I used an emulator “rewind” function to position myself on dozens of different positions on the screen in advance of a moment in gameplay where damage – despite my best efforts – was guaranteed. And if you should happen to be down to your last shield tick when this inevitable damage occurs, you can go ahead and call it curtains for your current run. My best guess as to what happens in these moments is that incoming enemies from behind – who have yet to appear on screen, or give you any indicator or notification that they soon will – are effectively guaranteed to collide with you on their way onto the screen — possibly due to a quirk of how the scaling algorithm works. In either case, it certainly makes for a downright unfair bit of design.
This begs a question: What happens when your shield depletes, and your shuttle of choice goes down in flames? Well, you go right back to the start of your mission — regardless of whether you’re 12 parsecs or 12 minutes deep. It’s totally possible for some of the stages to drag on that long, by the by. Namely, missions requiring you to kill a set number of enemies, where they appear few and far between over the course of your flight. In these instances, you can get down to the last bogey you need to blow up, several minutes in, and find yourself back at square one as result of just one misstep. Without checkpoints or progress milestones, you may find yourself stuck in a miserable loop playing the same stage over and over again. The only thing keeping you from banging your head against a singular stage ad infinitum [other than ultimately beating it] is the game’s arcade / high score structure, wherein your attempts are limited.
You’re given four lives and three continues to clear each of the three episodes – consisting of between three and six stages apiece – before a ‘Game Over’ kicks you back to the main menu. It should be noted that you’re granted passwords allowing you to pick up where you left off, but that these only start you off from the beginning of an episode. In other words, there are no codes which would allow you to select one from the thirteen individual missions. So, if there should happen to be some stage in particular that you’re itching to replay, buried three missions into a given episode, you’re gonna have to play through all the preceding levels before you’re allowed to get to the one you want. Not that this scenario would ever actually play out in real life, as every level in the game is equally contemptible, but it’s the principle of the thing that counts here.
It’s also worth noting here that Flight of the Falcon is a game entirely devoid of persistence or progression — where the Falcon [and all other vehicles] remain static in their repertoire of abilities and arsenal, from the beginning of the game to its end. Not even among the item drops within stages – comprised of refills for your torpedos and shield bonuses – will you find temporary improvements to your movement speed or standard laser cannon. These are power-ups that the game would seriously benefit from as well; as your pithy default lasers boast a methodically slow travel time and auto-fire rate (only marginally improved by rapid pressing), and as the speed you’re able to move across the screen and dodge incoming fire leaves something to be desired. Without additional abilities to barrel roll or otherwise outmaneuver incoming hazards, you’ll just have to rely on those shield repairs to indeterminately drop.
Unfortunately, your stiff movement is also tied inextricably to your aiming, as the on-screen crosshairs cannot be moved independently of your vessel. This means that moving to aim at a given target means moving the entire ship itself, so that your target lies directly in front of you. Consequently, this also means that getting in firing position is effectively setting yourself on a collision course with your intended prey — where you’d better hope that you can blow them up in time before you either collide or need to steer away. All this carries an additional quirk where the aiming reticule tends to stay close to the center of the screen, as an indicator of your current forward trajectory within the one-point perspective. All said and done, this was probably the most effective method possible for simultaneous control over aiming and steering, but it still can’t help but feel clunky in its execution.
By this point, you might realize that just about the only bright spots in the game come down to aspects of presentation. Moving away from the gameplay, you may observe the mission briefings and cutscenes serving to set up the levels; where stage descriptions are delivered in a very similar way to Rogue Squadron, and cinematics serve to establish the scenes and show off the 3D models. There’s even the attempt at recreating the classic ‘opening crawl,’ though text is rendered nearly unreadable past the very bottom row. In these brief moments, you may well be able to fool yourself into feeling like you’re playing some portable version of one of the Factor 5 titles, before the gameplay rudely awakens you. At that point, you might close your eyes and open your ears, to hear the game sample all the familiar Star Wars sounds and orchestrate some decent sound chip renditions of John Williams’ classic tracks. Funny enough, the lousiest-sounding track in the game is its take on the iconic “The Imperial March” — which plays on the game’s title screen, and manages to sound particularly low-rent and tinny.
There’s also the matter of a somewhat anticlimactic ending I’ll have to detract a point for. With the destruction of the second Death Star by a Lando-flown Falcon – where the final stage plays out as a trip into its reactor core, and a sort of boss battle requiring you to overpower its defenses – you escape just in time for a somewhat generic “Congratulations” screen on the surface of Endor, with the Rebel fleet flying overhead. Cue credits (including a very special thanks to ol’ Georgey himself), followed by… a Game Over screen? Granted, it’s not the same screen you’d see after losing all your lives, with Vader menacingly wagging a finger at you: There’s a picture instead of the Falcon flying away from some other random explosion. It’s all just a bit hollow, innit? I mean, it’s not as if I expected Pocket Games to punch up the ending to Return of the Jedi or anything. Maybe just tossing up some portrait images of the Falcon’s pilots might’ve made for a nice touch, to remind you of who you’ve been playing as through this adventure?
For all those nitpicks, I’d still rate the game’s whole presentation as above average for the platform at hand. It manages to impress without making too flashy a deal of itself, with clean design and technical prowess. This is, until you see the actual gameplay in motion, at which point the charade all falls to pieces. It’s as if Pocket Studios spent their development prioritizing pretty screenshot fodder, and spent little to no time polishing the core of the game. It’s either that, or they simply didn’t have what it took as a studio to create an engaging interactive experience. In looking back at the likes of their take on Alone in the Dark, you could already see some of the flaws in their approach to design — categories where they could’ve stood to improve. Unfortunately, Flight of the Falcon doesn’t really demonstrate any experience gained or lessons learned in those regards: For all their focus on the aesthetic, the gameplay is what stands to suffer.
There is actually one spot where the devs let their hair down, and didn’t seem to obsess so much over matters of spectacular graphics. See, on completing the campaign, you unlock a ‘Bonus’ game: A horizontal shmup pitting you against endless waves of Imperials and asteroids, with a range of new power-ups to nab. These include improving the fire rate and spread of your lasers, increased mobility for moving across the screen, and even little X-Wing buddies serving as your options. Here, free of attention-consuming objectives or pseudo-3D theatrics, the game is free to present you with a simple bit of arcadey shooter fun — where the challenge is derived from a balanced difficulty, rather than mechanical frustration. Sure, it may not impress as much visually, but the gameplay here is honestly way more compelling than anything provided in the main game. It’s fit to make you wish the whole game was designed in this more simple fashion.
Other than this bonus minigame managing to outshine the main game, there’s not much else for a player to come back to Flight of the Falcon for. Masochists may consider chasing high scores, but even this basic functionality is made cumbersome by the lack of battery save, and the unreasonable requirement that you be expected to manage separate passwords for restoring the high score table. Who in their right mind is gonna feel compelled to not just aim for high scores in this game, but to further fill the pages of some notepad with associated codes for it? Of course, the more important issue here is that the game simply doesn’t reward continued play past your initial completion, or warrant replay on its own merits. And when it comes to handheld games in particular, lacking replay feels something like a fatal flaw.
When you get down to it, what Flight of the Falcon most crucially lacks is an easily-accessible and addictive core. Between levels which all seem to drag on forever and one-note combat stacked largely against you, the game sucks for pick-up-and-play purposes. The behind-the-back perspective amounts to all pomp and no substance, lacking any hook beyond looking somewhat impressive. Again, I can’t help but fixate on the format of the included bonus game, and wonder how much better off the game would have been if played entirely from that perspective? In my head, I picture something like the presentation of The Empire Strikes Back on the 2600 (or more traditionally, Defender), with free rein to turn around and return to missed enemies and item drops. Even as a more straightforward one-directional shmup, I still imagine most every stage translating acceptably well to side-view — even the timed stages, where they might’ve opted for a slightly tilted angle and lane-based level design… Though I have to wonder if THQ’s previous reviled Star Wars title playing out in profile view might have something to do with them calling for a drastic shift in perspective?
So long as they were stuck saddled with this 3D gimmick, Pocket Studios certainly should’ve made more of it. I’ve already mentioned power-ups and progressions as hooks that might’ve served to improve engagement. Why not crib some notes from Star Fox‘s playbook and add some evasive maneuvers, be they somersaults or spinning (I hear that’s a good trick)? Adding secondary objectives / optional goals to stages would give players more than just the singular task to fixate on in a given level. And while they’re at it, they could’ve implemented a proper stage select where every level is individually accessible. But perhaps most obviously – the very least they could’ve done – they might have considered not drawing stages out for so damn long, or tossing some chuffing checkpoints a player’s way.
Despite Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon taking its content and theming from the original trilogy of films, it honestly matches up closer in spirit with the prequel trilogy which released around its time. Which is to say; in the pursuit of cutting edge visuals, the plots sort of get lost in the shuffle, and most everyone who plays or watches them is bound to walk away feeling disappointed and exhausted. There was all the potential in the world for these products to turn out entertaining, but some sorry directorial choices unfortunately serve to steer them in all the wrong directions. The key difference between them is, there certainly ain’t no misplaced nostalgia over this GBA game a decade after the fact. “Let the past die.”
You know, it turns out that the Attack of the Clones game I’m referencing here actually does have a few “3D” levels of its own. They’re, uhh… not great.
“It’s Not Wise to Upset a Wookie.”
“SECRET ‘STAR WARS: FLIGHT OF THE FALCON’ VIDEO GAME CHEAT CODES INSIDE!”
Flight of the Falcon didn’t seem to benefit from much in the way of marketing by its publisher. What seems to have been the most prominent push was a promotion by the PEZ Candy brand; where a brief run of their Star Wars PEZ dispensers would come packaged with “SECRET VIDEO GAME CHEAT CODES.” Evidently, these were further dubbed as ‘Millenni-codes,’ and provided passwords for immediate access to Episodes V and VI within the game. Unfortunately, information on this bit of cross-promotion only persists per allusions on the game’s Wookiepedia article, as no archives exist for a page apparently established on the THQ website (“www.thq.com/pezcheatcodes”) to briefly catalogue this business deal… That, and surviving PEZ dispensers from this period still in their packaging, promoting the codes on their top-right corners.
When it came time for reviewers to render their verdicts, Flight of the Falcon ended in a predictable crash. IGN’s Craig Harris – who also provided a quote I used in regards to The New Nightmare earlier – was astute in several observations made over the course of his written review: In noting that “as much as you’d think the biggest issue is its 3D engine,” he points out that the more major issue is the design of levels which “go on for far longer than they should, artificially dragging out the length of the game.” Further criticisms of the control and episodic structure culminates in a four out of ten score, with the conclusion informing readers to “forget what Luke said about the Millennium Falcon the first time he set eyes on it… this game is a hunk of junk.” A review by Pong Sifu for GamePro deals in a bit of misinformation – incorrectly claiming a count of “twenty dragged-out missions” – but accurately sums up the game’s content by describing it as “forcing you to dodge asteroids that materialize from nowhere, chase Boba Fett through pixilated [sic] Bespin towers, and fight neverending waves of mite-sized Imperial creeps that are hard to target.”
The award for “Most Generous Review” this time around goes to WorthPlaying.com contributor ‘Agustin,’ who ultimately awards the game a six out of ten after a fairly critical analysis. In spite of some scathing barbs including “it’s better to have a solid 2D game than a lame attempt at a 3D one,” and claims that “the game feels like a constant struggle to do the simplest things,” the game manages to save itself from complete condemnation on merits of presentation; with nods to “nice cutscenes,” “wonderful music, and perfect sound effects.” Still, a 60% here hardly affects the average, and the game’s aggregate score continues to sit at 39 on Metacritic. With VGChartz estimates pegging sales in the neighborhood of just 350 thousand – down some 400 thousand from Episode II: Attack of the Clones a year prior – it’s fair to say that THQ were squarely whelmed by the results of Pocket Studios’ effort here.
Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones for Game Boy Advance
(THQ / David A. Palmer Productions, 2002)
Within a year’s time, THQ’s arrangement with LucasArts would finally lapse, ending their run of coldly-received releases. Funny enough, there was actually another cartridge in this series which reviewed slightly worse (a single point lower on Metacritic) than Flight of the Falcon — which I skipped over in favor of covering Pocket Studios’ game first, because Falcon seemed more interesting to me. The game in question happens to be that aforementioned Attack of the Clones tie-in game, produced by David A. Palmer Productions. It ultimately serves as a fairly generic, somewhat clunky, and highly repetitive platformer; whose greatest sin seems to be a similar lack of mid-stage checkpointing. But because it had the benefit of being the direct tie-in to the film just then debuting, it was able to ride that wave toward more serviceable sales figures. Without that advantage – with “original trilogy nostalgia” evidently paling in comparison to “new trilogy excitement” at the time – Pocket Studios may have well been doomed from the start in their endeavor.
Unfortunately, Pocket Studios would soon be dissolved in the wake of Flight of the Falcon’s release and reception. With their official website having spent the past three years as something of a “minimalist” effort – a static page not displaying any announcements or upcoming releases – a sudden redesign in early 2004 might have briefly seemed to indicate that business was picking up! Unfortunately, this didn’t wind up being the case: It would only be a matter of months before the company went into administration (a practice where a company is put under management by an outside firm, so as to temporarily stave off pending debts), and ultimately declare bankruptcy by September of that same year. The news was not covered by any major games outlet. It would seem that by focusing their efforts entirely within the handheld space – long burdened by the pessimistic perception of dealing in “disposable” games – Pocket Studios would unfortunately be relegated to the same tier of expendability.
It’s something of a bummer that Pocket Studios never had the chance to ply their craft on the likes of the Nintendo DS or PlayStation Portable — to at least attempt to prove their worth on platforms that could perhaps better showcase their creative intents. But the world of licensed fare was a fickle mistress, and the studio knew full well what they had signed up for in pursuing such a narrow focus. With their Star Wars title serving as perhaps their best chance to prove their worth and demonstrate their value to publishers, their bungling the opportunity could only result in it having been their last chance as well. After all: It’s not as if the Star Wars brand itself was gonna be the one to suffer any consequence in this instance. “This is the way.”
… Did I fill my quota for “obligatory Star Wars quotes” in this review? I sure hope so. I mean, how else are folk gonna be led to believe I’m a ““Real”” Star Wars fan? It’d be absolutely disastrous if ever got out that I don’t actually care all that much about the franchise to begin with! Wait, did I accidentally type that last bit out loud? Well, shit.
How does a game end up looking simultaneously gorgeous and ugly?